What happened yesterday is a reminder that the story and the target audience are all that matter in politics, business and perhaps in life. President-elect Donald Trump had a story. With just enough historical “fact,” wrapped in just enough modern fiction, it was a compelling story about saving the working white man and getting his job and status in this country back. He had a target audience, the hard-working white male and his family, that is still the largest voting block in the country, if they will all vote together. For once, they did, because Trump had the story that resonated with them.
Hillary’s campaign is a lesson in never having a story at all. She is further proof that issues never win campaigns, though I doubt that her heavy liberal agenda would have carried the day. Having the better story, along with charisma and guts, tends to win over issues. Hilary could never develop a story-line that people could follow, much less rally behind.
Trump’s foibles, to characterize them lightly, bolstered his story, despite all efforts to use them to blow him up. He was an outsider. The insiders, even from his own party, railed against him for his idiocy, making him even more clearly, the outsider. The “down-trodden,” baby-boomer, good-ol’-white-guys who used to own this country and want it back, loved his bombastic style, his chauvinism, his racism, his political inappropriateness, his admissions that he beat the system, and his dedication to the decades old attitudes that, in the eyes of his central voting block, made this country great.
Maybe he will be a fine president. I certainly hope so. But bottom line, he had a compelling story to a huge voting group, and he stuck to it through thick and thin, and it worked. Hilary had no story, and lost.
Author of five novels available on Amazon, numerous articles and other commentary.